1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information display devices and systems receiving and displaying information transmitted through ground-based broadcasting, satellite broadcasting, CATV nets, the Internet and other similar transmission lines, particularly information including advertisement data.
2. Description of the Background Art
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 8-18521 discloses a data display device displaying information transmitted on a transmission line including advertisement data. The data display device receives and records transmitted data including newspaper data and advertisement data, and reads the newspaper data via a display means and thereafter, when a predetermined period of time has elapsed, allows the display means to display the advertisement data.
Furthermore in recent years an advertisement distributed via the Internet can be displayed to a user in the form of a banner on a web page displayed on a display for example of a personal computer or it can also be displayed in the form of a banner in a frame of a plurality of frames obtained by partitioning a screen of a web page, for exclusively displaying the advertisement.
The data display device disclosed in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 8-18521 is useful for clients as it can display an advertisement to users at predetermined intervals. However, when an advertisement is being displayed the displayed advertisement overlaps and the user cannot read newspaper data or the like. Thus the data display device is not convenient for users. Furthermore, if a user has finished reading newspaper data in a short period of time then the user would stop seeing the screen before any advertisement data is displayed.
If an advertisement displayed on a web page provided via the Internet is displayed in a frame exclusively displaying advertisements it can be displayed independently of a frame displaying a main screen. Thus, the displayed advertisement screen does not overlap the displayed main screen and the user can thus read the information on the main screen without any interference of the advertisement. While advertisements can thus be conveniently displayed, if the user jumps to a web page of a different address then the advertisement would disadvantageously disappear. Furthermore, a displayed main screen and a displayed advertisement screen are partitioned simply by a frame displayed on the same display screen and they are not partitioned physically. Thus, it is impossible to display an advertisement with higher level of definition than a main screen and display only one of a main screen and an advertisement.